Allez Toulouse!

Today I went to my first rugby game!

Now, I’ll start this off by saying that I know basically nothing about rugby. Tom and his friends were kind enough to invite me along and explain some of the basic rules for me, but I still don’t really understand. It seems to resemble American football somewhat, but I still don’t really understand why the players crowd together sometimes, why the ball goes flying through the air for seemingly no reason, and why they’re sometimes allowed to pick up the ball off the ground and then not at other times. Oh well. I’m determined to do my research before the next game and figure out just what this is all about. At any rate, it was a great first game for me: Toulouse beat Perpignan 21-17! Allez Toulouse!

What I did notice, though, is that rugby games here in France are remarkably similar to football games in America. It attracts the same kind of crowd and people act the same way. There were lots of people shouting and screaming and cheering at the players, which caused other people to shout and scream and cheer too. Everyone drank beer — one guy ahead of us in line even got pissed off because it was taking too long for him to get his beer. And, of course, everyone wore their team colors.

Now I really want a red and blue rugby scarf so I can show off my Toulouse spirit. (So European!)

All Hallows… and Saints

So my French Halloween was fairly uneventful compared to a “normal” American Halloween. I say normal, of course, because of the freak snowstorm that hit the Northeast this weekend… even if I’d been in the US, I still wouldn’t have had a normal Halloween!

The foyer d’anglais (a student-run hangout for anyone interested in English at the Mirail) held an all-day Halloween party which was pretty fun. Some of my English majors were there and it was neat to see them outside of class. There were two bands and a lot of people dressed up, so it felt a lot like a Halloween party at home. One of the girls brought pom-poms and I taught her the only American cheer I could remember: give me an “S,” etc… what does that spell? SPIDERS! (Go Richmond! Even though they lost to UMass this weekend…)

After that, I went out in the city with some of the other lecteurs. It was pretty crowded, but barely anyone dressed up… really, it could have been just like any other night. People were drinking heavily and being generally belligerent. Except it was a Monday.

And today was a very uneventful All Saints Day. I would have gone out to the city, except everything would have been closed… they had even fewer buses and tram cars running than they do on Sundays. They really take their holidays seriously here… meanwhile, I honored the saints in my own way: by watching The Big Bang Theory and playing video games. All in all, not a bad day.

Back in France

Well, I’m back! I had a wonderful time back home. Even though I had very little time, it was still refreshing to be back in a familiar environment (and to speak English again!). If I didn’t get to see you while I was home, I’m very sorry! I had so little time this trip. I’ll have more time to spend when I come back for Christmas.

I thought it might be fun to put together a list of some of the things I missed about the US:

• Target (groceries, clothes, DVDs and holiday decorations in one place? not in France!)
• Pop-Tarts (duh)
• Free wi-fi (sadly, McDo doesn’t provide this in France, and neither does anyone else really)
• My car (public transportation is nice, but I still love Mally Cat)
• My iPhone (and now the 4S is global… #@$! you, Verizon)
• Customer service (it’s nice when salespeople don’t yell at you)
• UMass (unorganized? nope, it’s a dream come true)
• My cats (even when Joon sleeps on my face)
• My friends and family!

But also, here’s a list of things I missed about France:

• Sirop (any beer is drinkable with a little peach syrup)
• Cheap wine ($9 is NOT cheap)
• French fashion (it may be snooty, but it’s better than sweatpants and ball caps)
• Old buildings (nothing is old in the States!)
• Warm weather (snowstorm in October? no thank you)
• Speaking French!

Now, since I have to wake up to get ready to teach in about seven and a half hours, I suppose I should get to bed. I’ve slept a lot since I got back and I’m as ready as I’ll ever be for another Monday. I certainly didn’t miss those 8:30am classes, though…

Garrett in Toulouse

I haven’t written an entry in a while, but it’s not without reason. And maybe it says something that I haven’t written in a while. First, I spent a wonderful week with Garrett, who came to visit me in Toulouse. We took a trip to Carcassonne and Montpellier and then we spent a few days exploring Toulouse and getting to know the city better.

     

Carcassonne was incredible. We went to see the medieval city, which is what Carcassonne is known for. I’ve never seen structures so old in my life and it was truly amazing. There were lots of neat shops around and we spent a lot of time exploring the city. Unfortunately, we couldn’t enter the castle because the bag I was carrying was too big – but that’s all right. That just means that there will be something new for us to explore when my family comes to visit in April.

     

We only spent a few hours in Carcassonne and then we moved on to Montpellier. We only spent a little more than a day there, but I think it’s a wonderful city and a great place for students. It’s a lot more open than Toulouse, I thought, and there was a lot to see. On the first night we only had time to have wonderful crêpes at a restaurant that Katelyn recommended, but that alone was wonderful. Our dinner crêpes were one with chèvre and bacon and another with tuna, spinach, crème fraîche and an egg, and then we had two dessert crêpes: one with homemade chocolate sauce and Grand Marnier and another with caramel apples. Délicieux!

First, we went to the Fabre Museum. We spent almost three hours there and we didn’t even see all of the exhibits in the permanent collections! They had a wonderful collection of sculptures and paintings and I was very impressed by many of them. It made me excited to see the Louvre in Paris… I can only imagine how huge it must be by comparison!

After that, we took the tram and a bus to the beach. It was a lot more complicated than I thought – even after a 45-minute ride, we still had to walk another 15 minutes to the beach – but it was totally worth it. I got to swim in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time, and in October no less! There’s even photo evidence, thanks to Garrett.

Finally, we spent the evening in the Odysseum, a huge shopping center, before having dinner at a French brasserie. I didn’t realize that clothes would be so expensive in France – we didn’t even end up getting much of anything! Our dinner was very nice, however.

The next day we returned to Toulouse and spent a relaxing Sunday at home. I do have to admit that although it’s inconvenient that most stores are closed on Sundays, it’s really nice to have a designated day of rest.

     

On Monday, I had my classes as usual and then took Garrett back to the Mirail to see the campus. Compared to American campuses, it’s not much to see, but the language lab is still very impressive. Then I took him to the Musée des Augustins, which has a beautiful courtyard and many collections of sculptures belonging to the city of Toulouse. Then we went to the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne and walked around in the public gardens for a while before joining some of the other lecteurs for dinner at a traditional southwestern French restaurant called Au Coin de la Rue. We tried foie gras for the first time – it’s wonderful! It tastes like silk, as Anna aptly put it.

On Garrett’s last day in the city, we took a tour of Toulouse. The tour was in French, but I did my best to translate – we’ll have to take an English tour next time. We ended the day by visiting some local bookstores and enjoying the city before going to Entrecôte for dinner, which is where I went with Dr. Radi. I kept Garrett completely in the dark, so he had no idea what was going on when he got the cut of beef that I ordered him. It was a wonderful way to end a wonderful trip.

Having Garrett here was wonderful – there’s no doubt about it. But it made me realize just how much I miss him and everyone else who was a part of my daily existence back in the States. I’ve been riding on the excitement about how I felt when I first arrived in France, but as expected, the initial stage has worn off and I’ve started to really miss home.

That’s why, as I’m writing this, I’m on my way back. Not for long, of course – here in France we have a vacation for Toussaint (All Saint’s Day), so I decided to use it to come home and recharge my batteries, so to speak.

I’m so excited to come home!

The French paradox

I realized this evening that it’s been quite a few days since my last entry. It seems so strange — time has been going by so quickly that I didn’t even notice at first!

We’re already a third of the way done with the semester here at the Mirail, but for many reasons, it still feels like the semester has only begun. For one, the weather hasn’t changed much — it still gets up to about 80 degrees during the day here!

More significantly, however, it doesn’t feel like I’m a third of the way done with the semester because I still have new students coming to class. Every day, without fail, I have at least one or two students asking to join my classes. It seems absolutely unreasonable to me — this is the fourth week of the semester and still some students haven’t found classes to take! The worst part is that some of them actually get angry at you when you tell them that your class is full, as if it’s your fault that they haven’t found a section to take yet. Boo hoo, I say.

Yet at the same time — to a limited extent — I do feel their pain. Here at the Mirail (and in France as a whole), you’ll often find yourself in what I’ve taken to calling a French paradox, in which an unsolvable contradiction occurs. This usually happens because something requires documentation that cannot be obtained without doing said thing first or because a process is divided into too many steps and becomes an administrative nightmare.

Here’s an example of the former: In France, most landlords will not rent to you if you don’t have a French bank account. However, you cannot obtain a French bank account unless you have an attestation d’hébergement, which is a letter from your landlord certifying that you have a place to live. The result: a French paradox! Luckily, I was able to avoid this one because my residence accepted wires from my American bank account as payment.

The second kind of paradox, however, is the one that I have to deal with. I call it: the homeless student paradox. Because there are three separate levels of registration at the Mirail, students can complete one or two levels while being unable to complete the other(s). The first is the inscription administrative, in which the student actually registers as a student at the Mirail. Okay, that’s pretty standard. The second is the inscription pédagogique, in which the student chooses from possible classes from a list of requirements for their course of study. That sounds pretty normal too… until you realize that this doesn’t actually sign them up for a section of a class.

The third level of registration — and this is the key to the paradox — is the inscription en groupes. This is where the students actually register for a specific section of a class. However, just because a student was able to “theoretically” sign up for a class during the inscription pédagogique stage doesn’t mean that there are actually still any available spots left in the courses they “theoretically” signed up for.

Moreover, these different levels of registration don’t all have the same cutoff dates!

• Inscription administrative: ??
• Inscription pédagogique: Thursday, October 6.
• Inscription en groupes: Officially, the first week of classes (for online registration)… unofficially, never.

So here’s what results: a student signs up for a Listening Comprehension class at the inscription pédagogique level after the online registration at the inscription en groupes level has ended. So, what they have to do is go around to each and every class in person and ask the teacher if there is any space left. But, of course, this has been going on for the entire semester. So students who waited until the last minute (or got very, very unlucky) continue to circulate from class to class and become more and more frustrated.

And that is why I still spend at least 15 minutes at the beginning of every class sorting out registration problems. I don’t see it ending anytime soon, either. Oh, how I miss online registration in American universities… I’ll never complain about registration problems in the States ever again.

One month

It’s hard to believe, but today marks one month that I’ve been here in Toulouse. It’s really strange to think that just 30 days ago at this time, I was settling down into this apartment for the first time after traveling for over 13 hours straight. I remember feeling exhausted and emotionally drained, but excited, too, because I’d be going to the Mirail for the first time the next day.

And now, here I am: I’ve finished the first three weeks of classes without too much trouble. I’m finally starting to settle into a routine (although students still come to class asking to join my section) and I’m getting to know my students a bit better. Each class has its own distinct personality: some of them are more serious and some of them like to laugh. I prefer the latter, obviously, since I think that language is most interesting when you’re having fun with it. Plus it makes me feel better about being up in front of the students for two hours at a time if I think they’re enjoying it.

Of course, there’s lots of things I miss. I miss everyone back home most of all, but there are lots of little things too. I miss having an oven and being able to bake. I miss driving my Malibu. I miss green grass. (There’s not a whole lot of it here because it’s so dry.) Mexican food, actually, as well, which I didn’t expect. I miss American customer service and always being right. (It can make people mean, but then again, so can being told you’re always wrong.) I miss getting plastic bags for free at the grocery store. (You have to pay 3 centimes per bag here! Not much, but still.) I also never thought I’d miss being able to express myself in English as much as I do. It would be so nice to be able to drive out to Target, buy groceries and clothes at the same time, and then check out in English. It’s the simple stuff!

However, there are things that I like too. The food here is fabulous — I don’t think I’ve had something that I truly didn’t like yet. Although the university is quite a mess, the new building is much better-equipped than UMass and it’s nice to have computers in every classroom. (I still can’t believe it’s not air-conditioned, though. It’s like the tropics in there!) The weather is beautiful most of the time — it’s only rained three times since I’ve been here. (Make that four — I can hear raindrops on the windowsill now.) Perhaps most importantly, my students are very enthusiastic and eager to learn, and I’ve made some really great friends in the past month as well.

I’ve made a lot of progress, too. I can now explain to a student in French (as I have many a time): I’m sorry, my section is full, there’s no more space for you, and you’ll have to find another class. I can make my way around Toulouse with little difficulty: if you show me a location on a map, I can almost certainly figure out how to get there. I feel comfortable enough now going into pretty much any store or building and explaining myself in French well enough to get what I need to get. (I even got a haircut last weekend!) Perhaps most importantly, I feel like now I’m comfortable and settled enough that I can really enjoy being here without getting too worked up over having to fill out this, that, or the other form in six different copies and bringing my passport with me wherever I go.

So here’s to one month of being in France. Let’s see what the next month brings!

Conversation nights

Tuesday night was the first Conversation Night held by the Mirail English lecteurs of the year. Every other week starting with this one, we’ll be holding these informal gatherings at The Killarney, an Irish pub near the center of Toulouse. It’s a tradition that the lecteurs have kept going for a while, and the students know about it and have been really enthusiastic. Our first Conversation Night was a quiz bowl, and I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. It was a blast, though!

The pub was pretty quiet at first, but it didn’t take long for the students to arrive. I didn’t have my camera with me, which is too bad, because the place was packed! Three of my own students showed up as well as several other people I’d met elsewhere at the Mirail. It was wonderful to see such a great turnout and to know that so many people at the school are so enthusiastic about English.

I don’t have all of the questions for the quiz, but they were definitely tough — even for native speakers! Each of the lecteurs chose a category and came up with six questions that suited it. My category was technology, and I thought it might be fun to post the questions here. How many can you answer?

1. What is the name of the former president of the Apple Corporation?
2. True or false: All American cell phones work in Europe.
3. Android, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X are all examples of what?
4. What does the acronym DVD stand for?
5. The search engine Google gets its name from a googol, which is a number representing 1 followed by how many zeros?
6. What is the name of the video game company that created the popular arcade game Pong?

Good luck!

American food!

I never thought I would be so excited to see American groceries in my life!

Mom and Dad sent me a care package full of all kinds of different food that I’m not able to get here. I don’t have enough room in my pantry, so I cleared out a shelf in my closet for all of the rest of the food. And what a feast it is!

One thing you may not know about me is that I LOVE Pop-Tarts, and have loved them ever since I was little. I had a box with me when I came here, but they all disappeared very quickly. I haven’t found anything that I like quite as much yet — there’s a box of breakfast cookies on the left in this picture that are from here, but they pale in comparison to the glory of the Pop-Tart. Yum.

And another thing: I love popcorn. Really, there’s nothing better than freshly air-popped popcorn, but since I don’t have a popper, I’ll take what I can get. Microwave popcorn is more than good enough for me.

Even just simple things like American candy are wonderful. They have a lot of American chocolate candies here, but not as much of the other sugared stuff. That’s why I’m so excited to get Swedish Fish, Starbursts, and gummies from Trader Joe’s. You certainly can’t get those here. I’ve found these neat sour candies at Carrefour called Cactus, and although I get a giggle every time I read “mega plaisir” written on the front of the bag, they’re still not the same.

So thanks for the care package, Mom and Dad! You have no idea how nice it is to see a friendly food item.

Do French kitties like tuna too?

I went for a run just a little while ago, which is the only reason I left my apartment today. It was kind of nice, actually. So far I think I’ve been thinking of my time in France as a vacation, meaning that I have to try to cram in as much as possible and make the most out of my time. It was really nice to have a chance to relax, though.

When I was coming in just now, though, there was a kitten waiting at the entrance to the building. As everyone knows, I have a soft spot for cats, and that’s even more so the case now that my own Benny and Joon are so far away from me. The little kitty was very friendly — she rolled over on her back and I let her play with the earbuds from my iPod for a little while. (At least, I think it’s a she…)

Since I certainly can’t take a kitten in while I’m here, I thought I’d at least get her something to eat. I had two cans of tuna sitting in my cabinet that I hadn’t opened yet, so I went in really quick to scoop some out for the kitten, but she was gone by the time I got back. I looked around and couldn’t find her anywhere, so I just left the tuna out in a corner near the entrance of the building in case she comes back. Realistically, any wandering animal could snatch it up… but hey, I’ll hope for the best.

I hope she’ll come back, especially since I’ve already decided to call her Minou (a cutesy French word for kitty). I’ve always wanted to call a kitten that!

A familiar face

It’s a small world, that’s for sure!

I met up with one of my former professors and research advisors, Dr. Radi, yesterday evening and this morning. It was wonderful to see her — she’s the first person I’ve seen in Toulouse that I have connections with from my life back in the States! (Except Nathalie, of course.)

We had a wonderful dinner last night at a phenomenal French restaurant near the Jean Jaurès metro stop. They have a set menu and only serve one thing: steak-frites. And it’s wonderful. You choose how you would like it cooked and what wine you’d like, and the rest is set for you. Their house sauce is amazing and the steaks were beautifully done. To top it all off, we had a wonderful chocolate cake. I’ll have to look for the name of the place, since I can’t remember — but I highly recommend it.

Through an astonishing coincidence, Dr. Radi had organized a conference on Renaissance virtue (her specialty) at the Mirail, and that’s what brought her to Toulouse. And because I don’t teach on Fridays, I was able to attend some of the sessions today.

See the Richmond logo on the lower-left corner? How exciting!

It was very interesting to attend a French academic conference as opposed to an American one — everything seems much more formal! Not that American conferences are casual by any means, but the French style of analyzing a text is much more methodical than what I’m used to. From what I’ve found, Americans always like to talk about their own ideas and sometimes stray too far from the text itself, whereas French writers might sometimes focus too much on the text and forget to form their own conclusions. At any rate, I think that a happy medium between the two is the safest way to go.

At any rate, it was a wonderful experience and it was great to see her here in Toulouse. I never would have imagined how nice it would be to see a friendly face!